This is my first time in Vegas without the Good Doctor heaving weighty charges and levying Truth as the simplest form of patriotism. Roaming around these grandiose hotels, debased with indigenous hundred-dollar bills posing as vases and marbled columns, there was an emptiness that sucked up every sin.

I can't recall at this point whether or not the eulogy I wrote him was my last post or not. There was another eulogy I wrote that bid farewell to many other things, including fraternity.

At this point, I think I was driving in South Jersey reciting lines from that favorite novel/manifesto, stoned out of my wits.I can't understand how I wasn't one of the first to know. Rather, I was one of the last ... which seems to be a running thread.

I was at home all day while my sister's body lay in bed with increasing rigor. I should have noticed early in the day that she was lifeless and white. But it took my father, coming home at 5, to truly see the lack of color in her face. My eyes have failed me once again, not that they could have saved her.

I don't really want to report how my gambling escapades are going, although I am slightly up. I keep reciting certain lines again from The Great (Non)Fiction Novel like, "No. Calm down ... learn to enjoy losing," while I roam around the floors, losing twenties like I'm losing my hair.

Vegas is a terrible town when you're by yourself. Impossible to enjoy the restaurants because you can't be the only balding 26 year-old in there eating by yourself. If there were a mirror nearby, I'd get depressed for any number of reasons, but mostly because a man by himself in Vegas is a sad thing.

I am surrounded by all these writers at this convention. Writing was something I assumed I would be doing at this time in my life, but for money. The unfortunate thing is: I still want to write but I make more money than most of these fuckers. Quite the quandary.